Conservation of Value and the Role of Risk. Increasing value through reducing the company's risk and its cost of capital.

Cash flow drives a firm's value creation.

Growth and ROIC generate cash flow.



Value creation

Companies create value:

• when they grow at returns on capital greater than their cost of capital or 
• when they increase their returns on capital.

Actions that don't increase cash flows over the long term will NOT create value, regardless of whether they improve earnings or otherwise make financial statements look stronger.

One Exception:  reducing the company's risks or its cost of capital can create firm's value

Actions the company takes to reduce a company's risk and therefore, its cost of capital.

There are different types of risk and it is important to explore how they enter into a company's valuation.

Only risk reductions that reduce a company's nondiversifiable risk will reduce its cost of capital.

Investors' Minimum Required Rates of Return, Cost of Debt and Cost of Equity

A company may raise capital by issuing

• debt or 
• equity, 

Both of which have associated costs.



Investors' Minimum Required Rates of Return

Investors' minimum required rates of return refer to the return they require for providing funds to the company.



Cost of Debts

A company's cost of debt is easy to estimate as it is reflected in the interest payments that the company is contractually obligated to make to debt holders.

For investors who provide debt capital to the company, their minimum required rate of return is the periodic interest rate they charge the company for using their funds.

All providers of debt capital receive the same interest rate.

Therefore, the company's cost of debt and investor's minimum required rate of return on debt are the same.



Cost of Equity

Estimating cost of equity is difficult because the company is not contractually obligated to make any payments to common shareholders.

For investors who provide equity capital tot he company, the future cash flows that they expect to receive are uncertain (in both timing and amount), so their minimum required rate of return must be estimated.

Further, each investor may have different expectations regarding future cash flows.

Therefore, the company's cost of equity may be different from investors' minimum required rate of return on equity.





Additional notes:

The company's cost of equity can be estimated using the dividend discount model (DDM) and capital asset pricing model (CAPM).

The costs of debt and equity are used to estimate a company's weighted average cost of capital (WACC), which represents the minimum required rate of return that the company must earn on its investments.

Capital Management in Personal Finance

A simple equation in finance describes your approach to capital management:

Assets = Debt + Equity

Everything you own was funded either by incurring debt or by expending your own resources.

Subtracting all your debt from the total value of your assets shows you how much equity (net wealth) you have accumulated.

The BALANCE of debt and equity you have used to fund the value of your assets is a critical portion of your financial management strategy, known as CAPITAL MANAGEMENT.



Cost of capital

Whether you use debt or equity to fund your asset ownership, there are COSTS OF DEBT and EQUITY involved, known collectively as COST OF CAPITAL.

The cost of debt refers to the amount of interest you will pay over the life of your debt.

Most people don't realise that there is also a cost associated with using your own resources to purchase assets, known as the "cost of equity".

"OPPORTUNITY COST" is the value of the next best option; so if you have the choice between purchasing furniture and keeping your money in a bank account, the opportunity cost of buying the furniture is equal to the amount of interest you would have earned by keeping your money in the account.

This makes most purchases far more expensive than people realise, since each purchase you make not only includes spending money, but also losing any earnings on that money if you hadn't spent it.




Effective capital management

Effective capital management requires you to assess the cheapest sources of both debt and equity being used to fund your assets, and also to find the proper balance of equity and debt so that you choose the cheaper of the two at any given point.

As you come to rely on one more than the other, its costs will start to increase; the more debt you have, the more lenders will start to charge you in interest rates as a result of the shift in your credit report.

If you rely more on equity, you will begin to pull assets which are more valuable, making debt cheaper compared to the money you would be losing by selling your investments.

The goal is to maintain the lowest cost of capital possible, using variations on the core equation:


Cost of capital 
= Cost of Equity + Cost of Debt
= [(E/A)*CE] + [(D/A)*CD]

E= The amount of equity you have
D= The amount of debt you have
A= The total value of your assets (D+E)
CE= The average cost of your equity (the money you would earn o the next best option)
CD= The average cost of your debt (the interest payments you will make)

E/A= weight of source of capital from equity
D/A= weight of source of capital from debt

You can assess whether your debt or equity is costing you more money from the above equation, to help you to determine the proper balance.

If these are not about equal, it is likely you could fund your assets more cheaply.




Are your assets generating returns more than the cost of capital?

Adding the cost of equity to the cost of debt gives you the total cost of capital.

The question remaining is whether your assets, on average, are generating MORE value than they are costing.

If yes, good for you.

If not, keep trying, because  right now you are losing money on your assets.

This equation only gives you a rough idea of your cost of capital, though.

The more precise you can be, even to the point of breaking down each source of debt and equity individually, the more accurate your calculation will be.

You are a lot better estimating the Cost of Capital without using fancy formulas

Estimate the Cost of Capital 

You have to estimate the cost of capital.  

First of all, the cost of equity will always be above the cost of the debt.  Secondly, the most expensive cost of equity is the type that venture capitalists have to pay.  If you read the VC magazines, they will tell you what returns they have to show on their old funds to raise money on their new funds.  These days that number is 15%.  Without doing any betas, you know the cost of equity is between 7% and 15% which is a lot better than the beta estimates.  

• Usually for the low risk firm with not a lot of debt, the cost of capital will be about 7% to 8%. 
• For a medium risk firm these days with reasonable debt, it will be about 9% to 10%.  
• For high risk firms, it will be 11% to 13%.

You are a lot better doing that than trying to estimate using fancy formulas.  So you get a cost of capital.

And the nice thing about not including the growth is that errors in the cost of capital are typically not that big. If you are 1% off in the WACC, you are 10% error in the valuation and that is not a killer error in valuation. 


Notes from video lecture by Prof Bruce Greenwald

http://csinvesting.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/greenwald-vi-process-foundation_final.pdf

 

 

Cue:  7/11

Roundtable: Buffett's Biggest Berkshire Bomb

Roundtable: Buffett's Biggest Berkshire Bomb
By Motley Fool Staff
May 4, 2009 Comments (5)

As you’ll see throughout the week, the Fools were out in force at this weekend’s Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A) (NYSE: BRK-B) conference. How can you resist trekking to Omaha to sit at the feet of Berkshire leaders Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger as they pontificate on the biggest financial crisis (hopefully) of our lifetimes? There were insights galore, but let’s start with these three questions. First, the big one:

What was the biggest bomb Buffett dropped?

Morgan Housel, Motley Fool writer: Forget the biggest bomb from this year's shareholder meeting; I think Buffett dropped the biggest bomb ever this weekend when he said he would have been comfortable putting his entire net worth into Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) when it fell below $9 a share in early March. "If I had to put all of my net worth into stock, that would be the stock" he said. I nearly threw up at first, but he made a convincing argument: Well Fargo's cost of capital is the lowest in the industry (and falling), which essentially fosters the birth of a new alpha-bank when the rest of the industry is slowly dying.

Ilan Moscovitz, Motley Fool editor: At a time when nearly everyone is condemning faulty compensation practices that have come to light at major financial institutions like Merrill Lynch and AIG, Buffett went one step further, remarking that compensation procedures are “way worse than practically anyone recognizes.” He said CEOs basically get to pick their own compensation committees, and since no one wants to be paid rationally, you have people being paid to do very irrational things. Boards generally function as a rubber stamp because members know that disturbing the “club-like” atmosphere could endanger their salaries and the prestige their position confers. As a start, he recommended abolishing directors’ salaries, and having compensation plans be drawn up at the board level instead of in committees.

Anand Chokkavelu, Motley Fool editor: I was only a few sips into my strawberry smoothie when Buffett said the words that made me smile the rest of the weekend. Basically, he got better terms on some of his much-maligned equity puts, which I think are great. Check this out: With a strike price, and the relevant put options on the S&P 500 in the 1500s, Berkshire incurred huge mark-to-market losses last year. But his counterparties were forced to “manage risk” by buying expensive credit default swaps on Berkshire Hathaway ... so even when they win, they kinda lose. To mitigate this quirk, they allowed Buffett to lower the strike price to the high 900s (the S&P is currently around 900). All he had to do was lower the term to 10 years from 18 years. Um, thanks for the do-over ... looking forward to the resulting mark-to-market gains.

As Morgan said, Buffett was strong on Wells below $9 a share. If you had to put your whole life savings into one company for the next 10 years, which would it be and why?

Morgan Housel, Motley Fool writer: Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) would be near the top of my list. Acquiring absolutely top-tier businesses and leaving management alone to do its thing is the only way you can make a megaconglomerate work, and it's a skill Johnson & Johnson (and Berkshire) have proven spectacularly capable of. Charlie Munger described J&J's culture of decentralized subsidiaries "very Berkshire-like" over the weekend, which really solidified this point. Take the strongest brand names in the world in an industry where the target demographic (aging baby boomers) is exploding and put them all together under one roof, and good things are bound to happen.

Ilan Moscovitz, Motley Fool editor: Aside from Berkshire (the obvious choice), I tend to invest in small caps, so I don’t have many holdings that I would feel comfortable plowing all of my money into. I don’t necessarily like the price right now, but if I had to pick one strong-moated company from among my current holdings that I’d want to have all of my money in, it would probably be Google (Nasdaq: GOOG).

Speaking of bombs, during our press conference with Buffett and Munger yesterday, Munger remarked that “Google has a huge new moat. I’ve probably never seen such a moat.” Buffett explained that some keywords fetch $70 per click and their advertising machine generates its own positive feedback and momentum. To try to parse what he’s talking about, Google has a few positional advantages that feed off one another: a dominant share of the search market, a strong brand, and targeted ad capabilities that produce a network effect between advertisers and end users. Advertisers get a wider market, while end users aren’t pained by sightings for male enhancement products when all they wanted was to buy some flowers for Mother's Day.

Anand Chokkavelu, Motley Fool editor: The fact that we have no idea what the government will do with the banks precludes me from naming a bank. Now Wells Fargo has tons of upside if things go right, and no one knows Wells better than Buffett, but as I watched Buffett sitting at the podium, I couldn’t help but notice the Coke can in front of him. Really, Warren, you’d be more comfortable holding Wells Fargo than one of your other huge holdings, Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO)?

All three of us are shareholders. Is your faith in Berkshire Hathaway higher or lower than it was before the meeting? Why?

Morgan Housel, Motley Fool writer: My faith is unwavered. People like to hint at Berkshire's impending collapse as soon as Buffett and Munger die, but I've always thought this argument is incredibly short-sighted. Berkshire's long-term potential will be more of a product of what Buffett and Munger have spent the last 40 years creating, not solely the product of what they can create in the future -- sort of like Sam Walton's enduring contribution to Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT). Buffett has almost no input whatsoever on day-to-day operations of Berkshire's 60 subsidiaries, yet some insinuate they'll shrivel and die without him. The potential for future homerun investments will obviously shrink without Buffett at the helm, but that's already assured given Berkshire's size. As Munger said a few years ago, "If you get Warren Buffett for 40 years and the bastard finally dies on you, you don't really have a right to complain."

Ilan Moscovitz, Motley Fool editor: About the same. The meeting reiterated Berkshire’s moats: A sterling reputation that attracts deals, a strong financial position that gives them the ability to act quickly and boldly when opportunities present themselves, and brilliant and capable leaders with independent thought and the right incentives.

Anand Chokkavelu, Motley Fool editor: The equity put reset (see my answer to the first question) reminded me why I finally bought in a few months ago ... people are just throwing money at Buffett these days.


This roundtable article was compiled by Anand Chokkavelu. Anand owns shares of Berkshire Hathaway. Google is a Motley Fool Rule Breakers pick. Berkshire Hathaway is a Motley Fool Stock Advisor recommendation. Berkshire Hathaway, Coca-Cola, and Wal-Mart are Motley Fool Inside Value picks. Johnson & Johnson and Coca-Cola are Motley Fool Income Investor recommendations. The Fool owns shares of Berkshire Hathaway. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2009/05/04/roundtable-buffetts-biggest-berkshire-bomb.aspx